Continued performance and lag issues.

Billyboy2

I just picked up the game recently, and I have to say I'm sorely dissapointed. The exact same late-game lag and performance issues that made me stop playing the original SINS are still present in Rebellion.

It's just not acceptable to leave such glaring, widely reported flaws in the game.

I'll start by saying that I love SINS, and visually this game is a massive improvement, the graphics and effects are spectacular, the gameplay remains solid, the additions are huge improvements, SINS is hands down my favorite 4X and is easily the best looking, and has the biggest scale. I love this game, or rather I love what it has the potential to become.

Let me clear one thing up, my PC is a performance machine, I built it myself for triple monitor gaming, this is not a case of my PC being slow, or weak, or underpowered, I've worked in IT for years and I know how to optimize my machine. I have a quad-core, 4GHz overclocked processor, an overclocked Radeon graphics card at 850MHz core and 1200MHz memory, and 8Gb of DDR3 RAM at 1600MHz.

This is enough to play Metro 2033 in DX11, full HD at 5760x1080p, at an average of 55fps. This machine should have no trouble with an RTS, the problems are in the game engine itself, and the poor coding.

Playing on a map with as few as 100 planets and 4 players results in the framerate dropping to simply unplayable levels after about 10 hours, completely independent of the graphics settings, resolution, effects or post-processing, if you play it in minimum graphical settings at 800x600 you get the same results as max settings at 5760x1080, which indicates the problem comes from the game engine and coding itself.

My first game (when I assumed the issues would no longer be present in an entirely revised and improved release of the game) lasted for 15 hours, dropping to slideshow framerates. I had 450 planets in 5 galaxies and 10 players. Now the save file can't even be loaded and the game crashes.

If the game were using my computer's resources properly, as 99% of other games do, I should have no problem with 2000 planets and 50 players, the game should simply not require the resources it currently does. If the game gives the option of creating maps with hundreds of planets, it should be able to handle them.

After my save file became unloadable, I started a much more conservative and gentle game of 100 planets and 4 players, which achieved the exact same results after only ten hours.

SINS is a game about conquering the Universe, the scale of the game is supposed to be massive, and I like my games to last for 30 or 40 hours, I like large scale, long term games.

Despite that being how SINS is advertised, it's simply not a reality when the game engine is this poorly built.

Just tell me, if there is any intention at all, to ever fix these issues, and make the game playable in the manner advertised?

I'm not trying to discount what you are saying or the issues you are having. I'm only going to say, don't you think you are really pushing it with that many worlds and that many AI in a game?

When I play a game, I never put more then 60 worlds in a game. i understand that you really want to have a long drawn out battle with the AI that can last maybe several days. but this all comes down to a few things. your PC being the main bottleneck.

If your PC is not up to the task of handling that kind of load, especially later in the game when there are so many things going on. then you can bet that the game is going to lag down and run out of memory and crash.

All I'm suggesting is that you change your game play habits a bit and not try to play on such large maps. trust me you can get the same fulfilment from playing a smaller map with a bunch of AI and have the game last several hours.

I understand that you may not like this answer, but its the best I can offer and its far safer to play this way. the games memory limitation bugs me to no end, so I have adjusted my gaming style to fit what I know the game will Handel without it crashing.

I can say without a doubt that Rebellion is a far better game and I do not get the late game lagging or pausing I used to get with the prior Sins games. this engine has been optimized far better. Trust me, Rebellion is a much more stable game.

My computer is not running out of memory, which is a point I made earlier on, the issue with the game is not that I run out of memory, but that the game does not use the resources available effectively.

For example, on my 450 planet match, my RAM usage never passed 3Gb, and it only seemed to be using 70% of one of my four cores, I use programs to monitor system load continuously as overheating in high performance games is always a danger with overclocked components.

So out of an available 8Gb it was using 3Gb, and out of 4 cores it was using about 70% of one, and 20% of the other three. Low GPU usage is expected, as SINS isn't a very graphically demanding game.

In comparison, games like Crysis or ARMA 2 use 90% of my four cores, and 90% of my GPU, and maybe 6Gb of RAM.

If the game could use my system's resources effectively, I could play with thousands of planets, but the engine is very poorly optimized, and it seems to me that very few improvements to the engine and resource management have been made since the original SINS.

But yes, I understand your point, the game as it exists cannot handle what I'm asking of it, but unfortunately thats the way the game is advertised and thats how I want to be able to play.

On that subject, do you have any advice for the most stable maps? 60 planets sounds like too little to me, and at 100 planets with 4 players (which I considered to be very small) I still had lag issues.

I'd also like to note that this isn't a case of me demanding ridiculous things from the map editor, as the default Random - Huge (Multi) map in the map selection menu has 142 planets and 10 players. At 100 and 4 players I experienced game-breaking lag.

But yes, I understand your point, the game as it exists cannot handle what I'm asking of it, but unfortunately thats the way the game is advertised and thats how I want to be able to play.

I totally understand what you are saying about the game and if it offers it, then it should work as advertised. But unfortuanlty games dont always work as advertised.

But from my experience, I know that the engine drags down to a crawl on those larger maps and when there are 6 or more AI in a game. So I adjust accordingly and play smaller games. Personally I prefer smaller games around 4 to 6 hours max. That is usually good for the group of guys I play with. then we just start a new game and do it all over again.

the crashes are due to hitting the 2GB ram limit of a non LAA (large address aware) 32 bit program. you didnt mention what OS you're running, but if you were in a 64 bit OS and the game is LAA (i havent checked if rebellion is or not, original sins wasnt) that ups to 4GB and delays the crashes.

the late game lag happens with or without AI, its the 'passive' AI - cargo ships, fighters, unit pathfinding and such. those are what make the game crawl later on, and for a game all about massive universal warfare its unacceptable that you cant actually PLAY on anything above the medium map sizes without game breaking lag.

for reference:

3.6GHz hex-core CPU

8GB 1600MHz ram

5870 1GB crossfire

1080p (as the OP said, its got nothing to do with graphical settings. one single game thread gets maxed out, and the FPS tanks.)

Tbh if you're running 450 planets it will lag,even If it utilised more memory... that is an astounding amount of crap. Games like Supcom2 (high unit on the field) rely more on Cpu rather than graphics and ram... however 450.. you can assume there's atleast 10 things on each planet.. 4500? At the lowest.. sure you can't complain on performance.. you sir are asking too much.

Games like crysis are actually easier to run than these games at present, unless you're talking the lower end of the scale.

450 planets is a bit excessive. Especially for Rebellion. On Original Sins you might be able to pull it off, because Original Sins doesn't use near the resources Rebellion does. The vanilla maps largest planet count is around 150 iirc.

Games like Crysis load, and unload their assets "on the fly", or as needed. Sins loads almost all of it's assets up at game startup, and keeps them loaded until the game is over.

The Iron Engine 32 bit, and only uses a single core of your CPU. THAT is why we get late game lag, because only one core is handling everything in game. NO, It will not be made multi core, or 64 bit. So don't go there. Its a dead horse issue that has been literally beaten to death over the years.